Our map reveals at a glance the hottest emerging markets of the past year, as determined by an algorithm incorporating economic growth, investment inflows and competitiveness. With data tables and Top 10 rankings across multiple vectors.

Viral V. Acharya, C.V. Starr Professor of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, speaks with Global Finance about the fallout of the coronavirus epidemic.

SIBOS 2014: DIGITAL BY DESIGN

Advertisement

Global Finance presents its second annual look at some of the key innovations over the past year within the transaction services space. We make use of the OECD’s Oslo Manual of Innovation, along with submissions, key research and the input of experts, to evaluate those banks and service providers that stand out in terms of innovation over the past year.

INNOVATIONS

The launch of AribaPay integrates ordering, billing and settlement processes between buyers and sellers to reduce costs, provide rich remittance data and let suppliers track and trace payments. Also, by shifting all transactions of its Ariba Network to HANA, its new in-memory platform for real-time computing, SAP will enable firms to make use of “big data” from their supply chain.

Axis Bank

In-house billing system

Axis Bank’s new billing system lets the Indian firm use business intelligence to improve interaction with both corporate and retail clients, increasing stickiness of clients and cross-sell of bank products.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch

CashPro® BillPay; CashPro Connect Reporting

CashPro® BillPay will enable clients to streamline and automate manual payables processes through a combination of check production outsourcing and migration to electronic payments. CashPro Connect Reporting can be configured across BofA Merrill and multibank accounts to identify and modify key data element. This feature enables data to be consistently presented across data sources and helps increase straight through reconciliation to our clients’ treasury management systems and enterprise resource planning systems.

Bankgirot/Fundtech

Launch of real-time payments system

Using Fundtech’s Global Payplus as a backbone, Swedish clearinghouse Bankgirot launched the first new payments system in the country in over 50 years. “Payments in real time” is, as the name suggests, a real-time clearing system that has an open technology framework and is flexible in terms of transaction volumes and ceiling amounts.

Barclays

Overhaul of payments platform and related infrastructure

A four-year project, Barclays not only harmonized payments across the entire organization, but also upgraded all services touching payments to ensure seamless interaction.

C2FO offers a hybrid working capital exchange and supply chain financial mangement platform where a company’s suppliers can sell receivables at a discount in a live bid/ask environment.

Citi

CitiDirect BESM Tablet

This is the first fully fledged, tablet-optimized transaction banking App in the market. It allows companies to authorize, release and repair single and batch payments; supports strategic decision-making with customized data views; and translates data into business intelligence-with data viewed globally, by region or by country, and filtered by currency and amount.

Danske Bank

MobilePay Business

MobilePay Business App-a mobile payments solution for merchants-has been built to attract both customers and non-customers of Danske Bank. This disruptive approach of encouraging use by companies that are not bank clients is helping it obtain extensive reach throughout Denmark regardless of affiliation to Danske Bank. About 20% of the poulation now has the app on their smartphone-a dramatic rise since its launch in mid-2013.

DBS

Working Capital Advisory Programme + Analytics

The DBS Working Capital Advisory Programme takes a unique approach to corporate advisory: through the program corporates can leverage the bank’s proprietary analytics tools built with data from 65,000 companies-and they do not need to be a bank customer to join the program.

Denizbank

Digital banking: Fastpay, Ceptevade, Twitter Loan, Facebook Branch

Although a number these solutions are retail solutions, the depth of digtial financial services offerings that Turkish firm Denizbank has launched is a clear indication of its leadership position in digital banking innovation. Some examples: the Fastpay digital wallet; loans via Twitter, a Facebook bank branch (not the only such offering, but they were the first) that allows “crowdsaving” (a new take on the crowdfunding concept).

Deutsche Bank

Cash Manager App in India (via Autobahn App Market)

The Cash Manager App facilitates straight-through processing of payments and collections for the complex Indian market, including e-Tax payments. The App also has an innovative dashboard feature that consolidates information, enabling clients to gain quick visibility into their account balance positions, payment statuses and key reports.

IBM

Transaction banking consultancy services

IBM makes use of its very-high-end technology tools to help drive the business intelligence it provides to transaction banking consultancy clients.

ICICI Bank

MARC (mobile-based automation of receipts on CARS)

MARC is an anytime-anywhere collections system that offers instantaneous payment updates and is mobile-enabled. It reduces collections process costs for the bank. Although an in-house system, it shows the ingenuity of the bank. Could it be sold as a solution other banks/large multinationals in the future?

Mashreq Bank

Integrated Global Transaction Banking (iGTB) platform

The bank went through a complex redesign of its corporate transaction banking infrastructure and rolled out a full suite of self-service GTB solutions with an integrated view via a single web portal, including: payments, liquidity, trade and receivables and collections.

Microsoft

Wire Request Tool

Designed and rolled out internally for the Microsoft treasury team, Microsoft’s WRT is a Windows Phone app that checks against the employee directory and safe approvals list to find the correct person to authorize a wire request, then alerts them that one is pending.

Misys

Confirmation Matching Service (CMS)

Misys’ post-trade confirmation service for FX options is helping corporate treasuries to improve risk management. The service matches post-trade confirmations between a corporate treasury (or other client) and its banks (or other counterparties).

National Bank of Abu Dhabi

Host-to-host
integration solution for corporates

Using a secure on-demand connection, NBAD launched a multi-entity, multi-community host-to-host integration solution that allows client data to be routed to different user communities, each accessing its own branded portal. This eliminates “spaghetti’ interfaces without using expensive middleware, reduces complexity and lowers costs

RBS

SEPA Accelerator

The RBS SEPA Accelerator is an end-to-end, all-in-one migration service with several applications, hosted on the cloud. It includes a self-service conversion solution for legacy direct debit, credit transfers and corporation tax formats into SEPA-compliant ones.

The Canadian bank re-engineered all of its business processes around payments and launched a single platform for payments, routing, administration and database management. This is a stepping stone to even grater innovation in its transaction banking businesses.

Standard Bank

Payments and
collections optimization

The South African bank is optimizing its mobile and digital payments and collections channels witha sophistication that few banks on the continent have mastered-with mobile wallets, improved collections for tax authorities, better reconciliation and notification solutions, and best-practice physical cash management across Africa.

SunGard

Adaptiv Riskbox

Credit and market risk analysis system for wholesale clients, the solution handles market and counterparty exposure calculations for risk modelling.

SWIFT/International Chamber of Commerce

Bank Payment Obligation settlement instrument

SWIFT and ICC launched the Bank Payment Obligation trade settlement instrument, founded on SWIFT’s ISO 20022 standards, messaging and matching services (TSU). The goal is to accelerate the inter-bank processes related to trade finance and help trading counterparties improve efficiency in their business-to-business trade flows.

Taulia

Taulia Enhanced Discounting

TED is a flexible supplier financing program that lets organizations choose to use their own cash or the capital of a third-party financial institution to capture early payment discounts and provide supply-chain financing to their suppliers.